Jon Magnuson is Lutheran campus pastor at the University of Washington in Seattle and cochair of the Native American Task Force of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. This article appeared in the Christian
Century, May 19, 1982, p. 594. Copyright by the Christian Century
Foundation and used by permission. Current articles and subscription
information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for
Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.

Its
midafternoon. In a borrowed ‘76 AMC Hornet, holding a fast-food chicken
sandwich in one hand and balancing a cup of ice water in the other, I drive
eight miles north from this Oregon university town to an abandoned air force
base which now houses a modest, little-known alcohol treatment Center for
American Indians. As the car radio blasts its frenzied commercials, the sun
is shining on meadows along the edge of the lush green coastal hills. A mist
from the morning -- wavering, mysterious -- still clings to the valley floor.
As part of a personal search for common ground between my own religious
tradition and that of native Americans, I have accepted an invitation to
share in a sweatlodge ceremony today. Sensing my need to prepare for this
passage into another world, I switch off the car radio. Led Zeppelin gives
way to the dull rhythm of tires on pavement.

I arrive to see 15 acres of cinderblock,
prefab buildings. Many have broken windows; most are painted a drab green. I
drive into the parking lot of a run-down barracks unit. The grass remains
unmowed. Pieces of discarded machinery, an occasional rusted can litter the
lonely landscape. To my right, I catch sight of the ceremonial grounds: the medicine
circle, made up of three circular sweatlodges, each about 12 feet in diameter
and four in height. In back of each lodge stands a cedar pole 15 feet high,
with colored cloths and a single feather teased by the wind. In the center of
the circle is a well-used firepit, bordered by three small altars made of earth
and stone, each in front of its lodge.

I walk toward the office building. A
handful of dusty cars and pickup trucks reflect the afternoon sun. Two dogs
play at the far end of the barracks.

Later that afternoon, I sit with
Victoria, a 30-year-old Seneca from Cleveland. We talk of the treatment
center’s struggle for funding and her work as project director to balance the
delicate political dependency on federal and tribal bureaucratic structures. One
of 130 such alcohol treatment programs in the country, this one has sought to
incorporate Indian tradition and spirituality into its approach. It is trying
to reclaim the deepest resources of the native American heritage in order to
combat the crippling effects of alcoholism -- an insidious psychosocial cancer
eating away the remnants of native American communities. Along with Indian
cultural events, support groups and local medical consultations, twice a week
the sweatlodge ceremonies are carried out: the ceremonial pipes are prepared,
the rocks heated in the firepit, the ancient spiritual songs remembered, the
purification rituals relived.

The fire is being lit, the wood split.
One hears now the ring of an ax -- deliberate, purposeful. I lean against a photocopying
machine in the main office, a stained table with instant coffee to my left and
a corner shelf piled high with periodicals. Three or four of us talk together
of religion.

The small, round-faced woman, Ivy, is 20
years old and comes from the Lummi reservation in Washington. She speaks of the
sweathouse as her “sanctuary.” Her father was once an electric-guitar player,
her mother a singer. She recalls years of traveling with them: “They played for
different churches,” she says, “all kinds.” She figures she’s seen them all --
and will never forget one that preached that all folks who were left-handed
were going to hell. “You know,” she says, half smiling, “I never got over that
one. It gave me so much guilt. I was left-handed, see.” I catch a quick glint
of her eye. Pat, a staff member, part Blackfoot, takes another cigarette. There
is a kind of painful humor now about their early experiences in the Catholic
Church.

I have been drawn here over the past year
by native American friends. My role as a non-Indian, a Lutheran pastor and a
Western-trained psychotherapist was first challenged years ago while I was
working and living with a number of Chippewas, members of my first rural parish
in northern Michigan. As I increasingly realized the incompleteness of much
Western theological reflection, I first turned to, then became disillusioned
with, the exclusively materialistic, behavioristic bias so dominant in much of
secular psychotherapy. My reading in psychiatry and religion confirmed for me
the importance of the symbolic and the intuitive. I have cautiously watched,
with interest and support, the assault on the overtechnologized concepts so
predominant in Western medicine and religion. (See Norman Cousins, Anatomy
of an Illness [Bantam, 1981]; Vine Deloria, The Metaphysics of Modern
Existence [Harper & Row, 1979]; Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: The
Expropriation of Health [Random House, 1976]; Thomas S. Szasz, The Myth
of Mental Illness [Harper & Row, 1974].) My conviction has grown
steadily stronger that in the remnants of that which our white culture has
sought so systematically and unconsciously to destroy lie clues to an
understanding of ourselves and others as common creatures of the earth.

The
fire is burning down. I wander outside to the medicine circle where six of us
have gathered. Now I understand why they smiled when I asked, “What time will
the sweat begin?” Indian time, right time, intuitive time, nature’s time:
when the fire burns down. We watch the burning logs together. Fourteen rocks
stacked carefully in the center, now glowing red-hot from the remaining
coals. Conversation passes among us casually, softly.

Dutch, an Oglala Sioux raised in South
Dakota, tells me about the numbers of rocks used for different ceremonies.
Tending the fire is a lean, longhaired, blue-jeaned staff member called
Alfredo. Relaxed yet intent in his movements, he reminds me of a hippie of the
‘60s. He’s part Indian, Dutch tells me, and will be the medicine leader for the
sweat. A younger man moves from the woodpile to the circle. Eager; helpful; his
voice is stuttering, tongue-thick -- scars from the ravages of alcohol. Alfredo
motions. It’s time.

We wait in running shorts or cutoffs. Ivy
and another woman stand with wraparound blankets. The pipe is prepared and laid
gently against the small earth altar in front of the lodge; the tobacco is
blessed and lit. Small ribbon offerings of varying colors are tied to the
inside frame of the lodge. A pail of water and drinking ladle are brought and
placed next to the door.

Alfredo nods and the thick-tongued one
acknowledges his sign. He will be our Stone tender, the fire keeper. Circling
the lodge clockwise, I follow the other six and stoop, in my turn, to enter the
three-by-three-foot entry. We sit together cross-legged around a shallow pit.
The leader asks if anyone is here for the first time. He says the medicine
circle has no beginning, no end; he speaks of unity and the importance of the
Four Directions; of Grandfather, whom, he says quietly, “we call God”; and “the
earth, our Grandmother.”

I remember Victoria telling me that the
sweat ritual used here is based on the Lakota tradition-- the Indians of the High Plains. As
Alfredo prepares for the entering song, I remember the Sioux word for
Grandfather: “Tunkashila.” The long-haired one continues speaking quietly about
the lodge as a womb: the darkness, the heat. The ritual of purification, of
going back, is to connect us again with Grandfather, with Grandmother. He
speaks about the stones that will be brought in: the stone people, our
ancestors. Before him lie two antlers taken from the altar outside to handle
the heated rocks.

The ceremonial pipe is lit and passed
around the circle, each of us drawing four breaths. The leader beckons the
stone tender to bring stones, seven of which are touched by the pipe, greeted
with “Ho Tunkashila,” and placed in the pit. Sweet clover is scattered on the
stones. We smell the scent, and wisps of smoke fill the lodge. Dutch leans over
and rubs the mists of natural incense on his arms and chest. Alfredo asks for
water from the stone tender. The door of the lodge is closed now, the blankets
pulled down over the entrance. Darkness surrounds us; care is taken that no
light is visible during the ceremony. Whether eyes are open or closed will not
matter. Alfredo begins in Lakota with incantations, songs, prayers. In the
darkness there are sounds of the ladle being dipped into the pail, then water
being poured upon the rocks. The heat -- intense, increasing -- envelops the
body in waves. The hiss of steam fills the senses. There is nowhere to stand
up, no place to move. The medicine leader carries on with the singing of a
spirit song, the ladle tapping a drumbeat on the side of the galvanized pail.
The steam and heat penetrate the darkness.

I hear gasps for breath. Inside, deep
within me, I feel the grip of fear. I want to run. A sudden, desperate urge
rises to escape. I steady myself. More steam. Thinking I will faint, my mind
cries out, “When will this be over? What excuse can I find for getting out of here?”
Familiar habits, techniques for dealing with fear of being trapped, don’t work
now. The senses are bombarded with intensity. My nostrils and eyes, my mouth
and ears, are filled with steam and heat. I feel the moisture dripping from my
body. My ears fill with Alfredo’s incantations and the rhythm of the Lakota
chant. I hear others around me join in an easy, high-pitched wailing song.

Our ceremonial leader shouts a Lakota
name for Grandfather. With a cry, “Ho Tunkashila!,” the makeshift door of
blankets is thrown open. Air and light surround us. Water is brought in. “Here,
friends, drink of the water of life.” Around the circle the ladle is passed,
each drinking and pouring the extra on face and body. No sense of hurry or time
here; no notes, hymnbooks, worship manuals or electric organs. Five minutes
pass, ten. Alfredo drinks last. Two more stones are brought in. The fire tender
closes the door. Once again, we are surrounded by darkness. The second round
begins.

The
now-familiar litany begins again, “Grandfather, have pity on us top-legged
creatures.” There is more steam and heat; the sound of a makeshift drum, the
tapping of a drinking ladle on the side of the pail. I feel faint; the
boundaries of time and space begin to collapse. I hear the prayers -- petitions
of thanksgiving, a plea for a cousin murdered on a reservation days earlier,
prayers for a family, for the fish of the rivers. The heat becomes more
intense. I give up control, let Ivy carry what is left of my consciousness on
the sound of her voice, chanting the ancient songs.

The third and fourth rounds follow,
intermingled with resting times of light, air and water. The scent of sweet
clover burns, permeating our circle. Somewhere in those moments, I open my eyes
to the darkness, and carried by the dull rhythm of the ceremonial chant, sweat
soaking my body, heat singeing-my nostrils, I wait for a vision from the other
side of my consciousness. I catch then a glimpse of a man hanging from leather
thongs, pierced, in pain, mortifying his flesh, waiting for a vision. The Sun
Dance: that holy liturgy of the sun, a sacred quest of the Plains Indians. His
face is mine; I recoil in fear, looking again, seeing nothing.

I recognize that my unconscious has been
triggered with a vision, paralleled in recent months in the symbol language of
my dreams; a struggle with my ego, my consciousness; my need for breaking
through and touching a deeper sense of self. I sense anew the struggle with
both my love and hate for the pressures surrounding those of us who carry the
socially approved but psychologically presumptuous roles of professional
healer, clergy or therapist. The vision is a real one for me, foretelling of
pride and denial, to be broken only in experience by pain and travail.

The heat increases now, the chanting,
incantations becoming stronger. Steam and heat fill my mouth and eyes. In the
darkness, Alfredo leads us in a final liturgy of thanksgiving: “Have pity on
us, Grandfather.” His prayer triggers for me the opening words of the mass,
“Lord, have mercy upon us.” Here is a primal human cry, set against the
personal encounter of Infinite Mystery. There are prayers now for the medicine
circle, the earth, those who look upon the sweatlodge from the outside, the
stone tender. A shout of “Ho Tunkashila!” is lifted upward. For the last time
the door flap is flung open. We leave the lodge in circular fashion. Some fall
to the grass, breathing deeply the twilight’s fresh air; a few move toward the
garden hose near the barracks for water; still others walk toward the makeshift
shower rooms in the drab green building turned treatment center.

I stoop to pick up my towel from the side
of the firepit and recall something the man named Dutch said as we waited by
the fire hours earlier. About how religion was “not meant to be easy.” How the
sweatlodge reminds us of that. And Ivy, in our conversation near the
photocopying machine, said that the first time she went through the
purification ritual she thought she was going to die -- a long-standing fear
for her, of darkness and confined places. It was in the community of the
sweatlodge, with the prayers and songs, that she was first able to break
through and conquer her fears and to catch a glimpse of hope. As I walk back
toward the parking lot, I feel a sense of unspoken communion, a common bond
with those who shared the songs and heat, the prayers and ceremonial pipe.

This descent into the spirit world has
been in many ways a strangely familiar journey for me. I think of my studies at
the Jung Institute in Chicago years ago, and am reminded again of the power of
the unconscious, the mystery and power of the symbols and dreams that lie deep
within the individual psyche. I appreciate now in a new way the sweat-lodge’s
role in the native American spiritual tradition -- a unique blend of
physiological cleansing and liturgically guided encounter with the deeper
levels of self and Spirit.

Reclaiming in these moments my own
religious tradition as a Lutheran clergyman, I am struck again by the contrasts
as well as the similarities between the two heritages. The essential character
of Indian time, in which a ceremony begins with no acknowledgment of
chronological time -- “When the fire is ready” -- bears a disconcerting
contrast to our attempts to regulate an efficient, smooth-running Western
liturgical worship. I am struck by my own tradition’s frequently misguided
efforts to fit spirituality into neat time frames like those scheduled for
theater performances or athletic events. As if we could regulate our encounters
with God. The sweatlodge reminds us of another way: of surrendering; allowing
ourselves to be “gripped” by the Other, renewed, recast, reborn.

There is an implicit understanding too
that the medicine leader in the sweatlodge has “been there before.” A certain
trust is offered in the conviction that he or she can endure this deeper world
of pain, heat and darkness. The leader knows the language, the rituals, and
performs them almost unconsciously, casually. He or she is the first to enter,
the last to drink. The priest/leader is the invoker, the singer of medicine
songs, the teller of tales, the friend of symbols. The sweatlodge guide, as
priest, is not as much a friend as a guide to another kingdom deep within -- a
Spirit World on the “other side.”

My hand reaches to the doorhandle of the
car. I pause for a last moment, gazing into the shadows of Oregon’s setting
sun. More than anything this day, I have been struck with the unrestricted,
open invitation to the sweathouse ritual I have shared. There is no pressure
for the treatment center’s members to be involved, no judgment on those who
choose not to reclaim that part of their tradition. The center offers the
sweatlodge purification ceremony with modest notice -- but with rhythm and
regularity. There seems to be a keen understanding of religious experience here
as an ultimately personal encounter, guided by community and ritual, but
essentially non-dogmatic. I ask myself if it has not been this affirmation of
personal destiny and purpose that has historically allowed native American
spirituality to be so receptive to Christian religion in accommodating and
creative ways. This attitude, implicit in the religion of the American Indian,
is the affirmation of a God who transcends all dogma, laws and codes. It is
this very personal encounter with the holy that marks Indian spirituality as
essentially experiential, yet creation-bound.

Weeks
later I sit with my seven-year-old son in a small clapboard house on Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I talk with a 70-year-old Red Rock Sioux,
her hair white and braided, surrounded by cardboard boxes of letters,
discarded magazines and papers. She speaks to me through her remaining teeth
of her memories of early childhood: her mother’s story of her brother’s birth
in the hills near Wounded Knee on a cold December night in 1890; her own
long, good years serving as an Episcopal deaconess for the church’s mission.
She still plays the organ for the small chapel and helps lead weekly worship
for the reservation parishes. Her knee bandaged from bones now grown old and
tired, she talks to me of the resurgence of Indian spirituality, the
increasing anger and despair of the young and militant, the power and promise
of a God beyond space and time. Her eyes grow deep and understanding.

My son Joshua notices a braided band of
sweet-grass near a cupboard door. He lifts it; the end is charred and burned.
The old woman tells us it was given to her by a relative over near Rosebud, 50miles east. Custom says it’s to be burned like incense during long winter
nights, to keep away spirits from the other world. “Of course, I don’t believe
those things,” she says, turning to stare out the dusty window. I hear the
drums now of the sweathouse, feel the heat, hear the Lakota spirit song, and
think perhaps I have seen, if for but a single moment, a twinkle in her eye.